Andhra Pradesh aiming to have 50 tobacco-free villages by end of May

Efforts are being made in Andhra Pradesh, India, to have 50 villages declared tobacco-free by the end of May.

After the village of Pongalipaka in the Madugula division of the Visakhapatnam district of Andhra hit the headlines for becoming the state’s first tobacco-free village on May 31, 2012, efforts have been under way to make 50 villages spread over six districts of the state tobacco-free by this year’s World No Tobacco Day.

Kishore Mogulluru, state consultant with STEPS, Strengthening Tobacco Control Efforts Through Innovative Partnerships and Strategies, said that the organization was leaving no stone unturned to score the half century of villages, a majority of them in Visakhapatnam.

He told The Hindu that bottom-up and top-down approaches were being followed to encourage villagers to convince tobacco product vendors to shut up shop, users to give up their addiction, and tobacco growers to shift to alternative crops such as green gram and tomato.

Andhra is one of two states, the other being Karnataka, that produce the nations export flue-cured tobacco.